By fumbling efforts to tear him down and resisting natural alliances, Thomas Mulcair’s challengers have made life easy for the NDP front-runner.

OTTAWA—For months during the NDP leadership marathon, it had to have become clear to his challengers that there was a need to tear down Thomas Mulcair.

For almost as long, it had to have been equally clear that those challengers had to somehow forge alliances and let the rank-and-file know there was a tent for those uneasy with the style and substance of the man known in some party circles as Tom the Bomb.

If Mulcair wins the leadership in Toronto this weekend, it will be as much a testament to his campaign as to the strategic ineptitude of Brian Topp, Peggy Nash, Nathan Cullen and Paul Dewar.

The Topp backers who tried to discredit the front-runner in recent weeks have gone about their task in the most ham-handed of ways.

They have issued vague whispers to journalists, offered stories impossible to substantiate and road maps leading down blind alleys.

The capper was the cranky intervention of a clearly frustrated party icon, Ed Broadbent.

An anti-Mulcair website was so antiseptic as to be completely ineffective.

Strategic leaks about Mulcair’s flirtations with the Conservatives only bolstered his claim that the government feared his ascension.

Mulcair himself has not been asked to respond publicly by a challenger to any allegation that could have been a game changer.

But still there are the dark whispers of threats issued to party stalwarts by Mulcair, the stories of looming reprisals once he is ensconced at Stornoway.

Those vying for final ballot status have been late to this dance and despite meetings in search of alliances, Topp, Nash and Cullen have been unable to move from the informal to the strategic.

There have been meetings between Topp and Cullen and Nash and Cullen, but as the race entered its final week there was no coherent plan.

Maybe the party voters can do it for them, slowing their rush to judgment and waiting until Saturday to vote strategically after Mulcair’s first ballot strength can be quantified.

But by the end of business Friday, 25,000 of the 131,000 eligible party voters had cast their preferential ballot.

The Conservatives are prepared for Mulcair.

Senior sources claim they would welcome his abrasiveness in the House of Commons because they don’t think that style sells well to voters.

They see a leader who will be so engaged in repairing the crumbling foundation of the party in Quebec, that the party’s other flanks, particularly British Columbia, will be vulnerable.

They see a leader who will be busy putting out internecine fires — or fuelling them — after his victory, possibly even losing Vancouver MP Libby Davies whose antipathy for Mulcair is well known and who could be prepared to move into the provincial arena where a cabinet seat would await her if New Democrat Adrian Dix wins the 2013 B.C. vote.

If Mulcair enters the final week with momentum in this race, he is not alone.

Cullen — he who would enjoin progressive voters in select ridings — also bears watching.

He, more than any other candidate in this race, has parlayed the power of Twitter and other social media into fundraising and volunteers.

He is believed aligned with Mulcair, although he denies it.

“We’re thinking still of old delegated conventions where alliances meant a great deal and deals meant a great deal and I don’t see it,” he said.

“I don’t think people crossing the floor with handshakes, a wink and a nod are going to mean anything, even between now and then.”

His second choice, he says, “occupies none of my time.”

But he does share something with Mulcair.

The party establishment also pronounced his campaign stillborn.

“They told us out of the gate, ‘You won’t raise any money and you won’t get any support.’ There were those in the party who said ,‘You have killed yourself before you get out of the gate. You won’t sign anyone up.’

“And lo and behold they were wrong.”

It is significant that the two men least wedded to traditional NDP orthodoxy are sailing into Toronto with the wind at their backs.

Tim Harper is a national affairs writer. His column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. tharper@thestar.ca

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